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Has this ever happened to you? You're attending your garden; it's just a routine walk to make sure that your garden is thriving, but you end up finding holes in all of your plants that looked fine only hours before. The explanations for this is garden pests. Some of the main garden pests are slugs, worms, caterpillars, birds, snails, and the occasional gopher.
Although you can never wipe out these pests entirely, there are some steps you can take to prevent further distraction of your gardening efforts.
Unwanted insects are one worst things to have in your garden; they can live under the soil, in old weeds or piles of leaves, or in a number of other places. In order to help keep these insects away, try and eliminate places in your garden and near your garden that these insects and other plant diseases could be living. Remove old leaves, weeds, or any other decaying matter that insects and diseases could be living in. Also, regularly turn over your garden soil and break apart any clumps of dirt so that you can eliminate the living spaces of any insects that might be hiding underground.
You can use dormant spray to keep destructive insects and diseases under control. It is best that you use dormant spray when your plants are dormant, usually around February or early March. I have used dormant spray many times on my garden and it has worked wonders on keeping insects out. But as I learned from experience, dormant spray is only effective if you follow the correct instructions. When I first decided to use some on my garden, I just dumped it everywhere in hopes of killing everything harmful. Uunfortunately I ended up killing my entire garden along with my neighbors. Some insects can be beneficial to your garden though, so be sure to find out which insects help your garden.
Birds can also be a destroyer of your hard earned garden. Whenever I see birds in my garden I run outside a chase them away, but as soon as I step inside they come right back. The solution that I've come up with to keep the birds away from my garden is to put a bird feeder in my yard. Instead of costing me time and money by eating my garden, the birds eat at the bird feeder. In the long run it'll save you money. Not only can a bird feeder help keep birds away from your garden, but they can also be a new part of your yard decoration. Although not completely eliminating my bird problem, my bird feeder has made the problem smaller. Getting a dog has also helped.
You can assume that you have a gopher problem if you start seeing mounds of dirt round your yard, and your plants keep unexplainably dieing. Thankfully, this is one of the few garden pasts that I haven't had. However my friend has struggled with a tremendous gopher infestation, so I decided to research it. Gophers are rodents that are five to fourteen inches long. Their fur can be black, light brown, or white, and they have small tails. One method of getting rid of these root-eating pests is to set traps. The key to successfully capturing a gopher using a trap is to locate the gopher's tunnels and set the trap correctly. Another way to get rid of them is to use smoke bombs, which you place into the tunnel and the smoke spreads through out it and hopefully reaches the gopher.
If you suspect that your garden is being pillaged by any of these pests, I encourage you to try your hardest to eliminate the problem as soon as possible. The longer you let the species stay, the more established it will become and the harder it will be to get rid of.
About the Author:
Jim Sloan is a garden enthusiast and more organic gardening supplies can be found at http://www.plants-trees-shrubs.com.
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Home & Garden 
Garden Pests